Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Found a few

Went to an antique shop this last weekend, for the first time in quite a while. Picked up a few old tools for a very reasonable price -- for around here, anyhow.

First photo here shows a big ol' wooden clamp, a small gent's saw (first one I've ever owned), and a rabbet plane that's a different thickness than any of my others. Also an old ruler of mine, for a sense of scale.

I cleaned up the rust on the gent's saw, and it's a user. The rabbet plane I've tidied up and pressed into service. The clamp is going into my ''Future Gifts'' box, which The Lady rummages through for Father's Day, birthday, and Christmas gifts for me.

One thing that amused me was the price sticker (see below) which called the rabbet plane a ''spokeshave''.

Actually, **these** are spokeshaves:

But, antique dealers handle a broad variety of objects, across many trades and time periods -- can't be expected to know everything.

These are an assortment of oddball bits, for a brace. I usually call them ''augers'', but I think that's technically incorrect. The lady had a bunch of cellophane bags with about 15 bits per bag. Most of them were pretty ordinary -- looked like the one in the top left with the green arrow pointing to it -- and I already have plenty of those. Whereas this one has a bunch of old-timey and specialized bits, like spade bits, a spoon bit, a countersink bit, and a bit (I believe) for making the end of a dowel all pointy.

So, a pretty decent haul, at a pretty decent price. They also had two old-timey workbenches, but one was waaaaay expensive (over a thousand dollars), and the other was pretty beat up -- not suitable for actual woodworking.